Mastering the Pitch: How to Capture Attention and Persuade with Purpose | Joanne Tombrakos

---

Why Simplicity and Storytelling Matter More Than Ever

Joanne Tombrakos shares how pitching is more about persuasion than selling, emphasizing the importance of grabbing attention quickly and building trust through storytelling. She explains why simplifying your message and delivering value fast are key to winning your audience.

What does it take to grab your audience’s attention in the first few seconds?

Bill Sherman explores the art of pitching with Joanne Tombrakos, storyteller, marketing strategist, NYU professor, podcaster and writer. and expert in crafting powerful messages. Joanne breaks down the misconception that pitching is just about selling. Whether you’re selling a product or an idea, the goal is the same: persuasion. It’s about getting your audience to stop, listen, and invest time in your idea. Joanne shares the importance of setting the hook early and keeping people engaged by delivering value quickly and clearly.

Joanne emphasizes that pitching is not just for salespeople—it’s a skill everyone needs. In business, you’re constantly pitching yourself, your ideas, or your projects. She compares pitching to a form of storytelling, where your narrative must not only catch attention but also build trust. Joanne also touches on the fine line between pitching and selling, explaining that while every pitch has an underlying goal of persuading, the real focus is on creating a connection. Through storytelling and strategic messaging, you can build a relationship that makes people want to listen longer.

The conversation also delves into modern challenges, like competing with digital distractions. Joanne stresses that grabbing attention isn’t enough—you need to hold it. Like a Netflix series that hooks viewers in the first few minutes, your pitch needs to pull the audience in right away and deliver substance, not just flash. For leaders, entrepreneurs, and marketers, her advice is clear: simplify your message, make it relatable, and always lead with value.

Three Key Takeaways

Pitching is about persuasion, not just selling: Whether you’re pitching a product, idea, or project, the goal is to persuade your audience and capture their attention. It’s not just about making a sale—it’s about getting them to care.

Hook your audience quickly: Joanne stresses the importance of grabbing attention within the first few seconds. Like a great story, your pitch needs to engage right away, offering value and building trust so your audience wants to stick around.

Simplicity wins: Don’t overcomplicate your message. The most effective pitches are clear and concise. Distilling your idea into one sentence can help you stay focused and make a more powerful impact.

Joanne helps us understand how the Pitch needs to move beyond persuasion and into a relationship. If you want to understand how those relationships can help ideas reach scale be sure to check out this video by Thought Leadership Leverage COO Bill Sherman.

---

Transcript

Bill Sherman But leadership is in many ways a sales process. You pitch an idea or insight to the people who you think will benefit from it. And just like a pitch, you need to catch your attention of your audience quickly and convince them that the idea is relevant to them or they’re quickly going to move on. My guest today is Joanne Tombrakos. She’s a thought leadership practitioner who describes herself as a storyteller, marketing strategist, NYU professor, podcaster and writer. I got to know her through her book, Crafting Your Pitch, which evolved from her NYU class. We talk about why pitch isn’t a dirty word, and we also talk about setting the hook early and getting your audience’s attention quickly. I’m Bill Sherman. This is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready? Let’s begin. Welcome to the show, Joanne.

Joanne Tombrakos Thank you, Bill. I’m really quite delighted to be here this morning.

Bill Sherman So in the world of thought leadership, there’s a constant process of pitching your ideas and getting attention for them. And so one of the reasons I want to have this conversation with you is quite literally, not only do you teach a class at NYU on pitching, but also you’ve written a book on it. So when you think about pitching, what is the most common misperception that you run into from people?

Joanne Tombrakos Well, I think that the first thing is, is that people hear the word pitch and they immediately associate that with sell. And there’s this aversion to that word, which never has never ceased to surprise me, because if you’re in business, you’re in the business of selling, you know, whatever part of the business that you are in. Ultimately, you are there to sell your product or service. The people get a little crazy with it because they get this idea in their head. And those who are older who would know. Alec Baldwin’s classic character in Glengarry Glen Ross. Glen Ross on and not everybody. I don’t know. There may be some listeners who are like, I’ve never I never saw that movie. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. But that idea of that really pushy, crazy person who’s doing the pitch and all they’re caring about is the selling aspect of it. But we’re always pitching ideas. We’re pitching ourselves as well. I think people lose sight of that. And I one of the examples I use in my book is that, you know, if you’ve got a kid and they don’t like broccoli, you’re trying to come up with some pitch and how you’re going to get that kid to eat the broccoli. So it’s part of our everyday lives, obviously in business to be takes on a slightly different tone. But I think that’s really it is this edited version that I’m being pushy and I’m trying to get someone to do something that they may not want to do as opposed to looking at it as a vehicle for persuasion.

Bill Sherman So. I like that. And that starts to be the nucleus of a definition. And I was going to ask you to push even further, distinguish between pitching and selling for me because they’re clearly related. But what is specifically the heart of a pitch?

Joanne Tombrakos AC. I don’t think there is a difference. Okay. And there is many people who would argue with me on that because if you are pitching something, you are trying to persuade someone to either at least at the very least entertain whatever your idea is. And you can’t get you never going to get anyone to buy anything, so to speak. And in the classic way, you’re still selling because that’s what you’re doing. It’s kind of it’s it’s the way that you sell. What is the pitch? What’s important here? What is the value to me as the potential person who’s going to consume that, whether it is a, you know, everyday consumer where you’re pitching in front of a boardroom someplace? Does that make sense?

Bill Sherman It does. And where I might build on that is the call to action may not be a transaction where dollars are exchanged, but time, attention, value, relevance, those are all. Commodities that can be exchanged in and around the pitch.

Joanne Tombrakos You know, and I think what you just said there really it it’s worth a stopping for a second because. I and it goes back to your first question, but I think for many people, they think the pitch is just to sell something. But the pitch is part of what that journey is, to get someone to actually make some sort of a purchase, whatever it is. Because no matter what it is, where we are selling something just Is that is that makes sense?

Bill Sherman Absolutely. I mean, and so even if I distill an idea down into its most granular statement, maybe a sentence or two. Can I get you to stop, think and say, Yeah, you’ve got my attention. I’ll give you a 60s.

Joanne Tombrakos Right, Exactly.

Bill Sherman Can you go from five seconds to 60s to five minutes to an hour to. Yes. I need to look at that more. It’s this building cascade of commissions, attention, education and long before dollars are committed, whether it’s an internal project or a sale to a third party, you have to earn attention first and.

Joanne Tombrakos You have to earn attention. And from that. Once you get that attention, obviously it will, at least in my opinion, the idea next is to start to build some sort of trust in there so that someone wants to hang around a little bit longer to hear what’s coming next, that that there’s something solid behind that initial pitch. So I think that’s one of the things that happens sometimes as people hook people in and we’ll probably talk about that soon. Well, will help people and will get their attention. And then it’s I think the modern day equivalent of that is click bait. And there’s the title and now I’ve click through. But the substance beyond it is is of no value to me. So you want to make sure whatever you’re doing to get that attention that there is really going to be value because that’s where you’re going to start to to build the trust and get someone to hang around for more than that. 30s or 60s.

Bill Sherman Well, and let’s stay on click bait for a second. And the classic listicle of one weird trick or three you know, reasons why. Dot, dot, dot. Whether it’s on home decorating or doing whatever. Right. Those things almost trigger a instinct like reflex where we click on them. And then somewhere within that first 10 to 15 seconds, our brain starts almost consciously revolting and going, So why am I reading this? Why am I here?

Joanne Tombrakos What? Why did I do that? And now I’m going to have this thing following me all over the Internet no matter where I go. You know.

Bill Sherman Exactly.

Joanne Tombrakos To that. We’re on to that part of what goes on in digital media these days.

Bill Sherman So let’s talk about setting the hook effectively, right, in a pitch. And how do you earn attention and capture attention and nurture attention?

Joanne Tombrakos Wow, that’s a lot there. Okay, let’s start with how you’re going to get attention. Then we can go back. As I know, knowing me, I’ll forget the rest of what you just said. It has to be something that is going to make somebody perk up in. I use the analogy a lot by what we see when we watch some show on Netflix. Okay? Within the first few clips that you’re going to see, you’re going to know whether or not you’re going to want to hang out there for a while because something is pulling you in. Now, again, what happens afterwards becomes critical. So that’s you want to do the same thing when you’re pitching in front of a group of people, whatever it is. And one of the things that I tell my students this all the time is that, you know, if you actually are in a formal presentation and they know while you’re there, the worst thing in the world you want to do is start by saying, you know, Hi, today, I’m here to talk to you about X, Y and Z. Well, you know, we know that part. So I’d.

Bill Sherman Like to thank you very.

Joanne Tombrakos Much, John. It’s on the agenda. Let’s dive right in and ask a question, have an image, something that is going to make people put down their phones because on top of everything else, we are competing with technology, which is an addiction, complete addiction. And there’s not a lot you can do all the time depending on who you’re sitting in front of. To get them to stop doing that. If I’m teaching a class at NYU, I can ask my students to tell them to put it away, and they may put it away for a few minutes. But if I am presenting to the CEO of a company and he decides or she decides to pick up their phone, it’s going to be a little bit more challenging for me to say, excuse me, can you put that away right now? Because, again, you know, you’re there to present to them. So that’s another part of what it is. What’s going to make. What’s that first page, those first few lines in a book that say, okay, you’ve pulled me in, you’ve dropped me right into it. So that’s where a lot of the storytelling aspect I think of pitching really, at least from my perspective, comes into play.

Bill Sherman And I think it’s not just having a provocative idea or a new perspective. It’s framing that idea in the story, which becomes essential. And so it’s a lot of work beforehand to earn those first five seconds of attention.

Joanne Tombrakos Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I, I know you know this because you’ve been in business. But the fact of the matter is, it’s not always the best idea that ever wins or sells or absolutely anything or gets you to buy something. But it’s the one that was presented the best, you know? How was that pitched? Brands are pitching us all the time, but people don’t necessarily say that that’s the pitch know how does Apple pull us in and keep us hooked? And the next thing you know, you can’t get out of that. The web that they’ve that they’ve got you into.

Bill Sherman And I think they might say walled garden from a perspective of storytelling rather than web. But yeah.

Joanne Tombrakos Yes, I know. Well, they said well again because that’s they. And words matter. Words matter when you’re when you’re telling a story and how that that’s going to get delivered. You know, I’m a big believer that the semantics of it makes a big, big difference in how something’s going to land.

Bill Sherman So. Let’s move to your teaching and the evolution of the book. Now you have a background in pitching specifically. So let’s touch on that and then go into the class of then why.

Joanne Tombrakos I do so in my corporate career. I was on the advertising sales side of the business. I started out and I was I started out selling radio and then I moved out to television and I was selling the commercials that you hear or see. And then I when I left corporate, somehow or other, I graduated into digital. So it’s, you know, it’s kind of my advance, my advanced degree in there. So that’s what I did. I was always pitching ideas. I was, you know, trying to convince people why whatever products I have, we’re going to help their businesses. So when I was at NYU and I still look at that actually, which some of my colleagues may or may not agree with me on, but even when I’m in front of a class and I’m teaching 2.5 hours, to me it’s a pitch. It’s, you know, what do I want my students to lead with? Which is the same thing at the end of those 2.5 hours, the same thing that I would do if I was standing in front of the client. What’s that thing I want them to walk away with now? And how am I going to how am I going to present that? So I was invited to teach. And one of the problems that we have, which is called the Real World Strategic Partnership Program, where we actually work with a company, the company gives a ask to the students and the students spend the semester solving that problem. And there you have to apply to be in the program. It’s only 16 students in a class. So it’s you really I really get to know them. They’re all graduate students and they come from different degrees within NYU’s school professional studies, and they also compete against each other. So the client at the end of the semester is going to pick the winning idea. And when I started it, I realized that this is something that we really don’t teach. We don’t teach it well. Students were like, How do I do this? And because we are living in a world where there is so much data. It’s so easy to drown in that data without figuring out that it’s not the data that’s important. It’s the insights. It’s what we’ve learned from the data that’s going to support whatever idea we came up with. And on top of that, when it comes to marketing, there’s a thousand more tools than there were certainly when I started out selling sounding radio. So it shouldn’t have surprised me. And what but what the challenge for me was that I knew what to do. But I had been doing it for so long that it was muscle memory. So how do I break this thing down? So I start to teach students and that’s really how the book started to evolve. I didn’t say, I’m going to write a book on how to how to how to pitch, but how do I do this? How do I explain to them how to tell a story? And it started initially as a checklist that I gave to my students to help them through the process and to help me to teach about or quite frankly, it’s really where it came out of. And I remember saying to a group of students, you know, I keep thinking I should, you know, build on this. And we have a little book and you’re like, my God, Professor, you have to do that. You have to do that. So it was a very organic process and I was really written for my students. But as I started to write it, I realized that this is good for anybody because the fact of the matter is, is that. I’ve sat through enough boring presentations in my life that I know that not everyone knows things about it, and it’s easy to get caught up in the minutia again because again, we’re living in this, this time where we are such so overwhelmed with data and figuring out what’s important from the noise can be a big challenge.

Bill Sherman Well, and this goes back to the conversation around sales as well. And. Even though many schools teach marketing, there are very few programs that teach sales, sales skills and as part of a curriculum. Right. And pitching is one of those essentials, not only if you’re going into a career in sales, but if you’re going into a career in corporate or in consulting, you have to be able to present the idea. And yet we say technical expertise is enough and then send a poor engineer out with a PowerPoint deck that looks like war and peace on a slide.

Joanne Tombrakos And I wonder.

Bill Sherman Why people sort of glaze over.

Joanne Tombrakos Exactly. Exactly. Everyone knows how to sell. I think it was Warren Buffett who once said that he thinks that and he doesn’t consider himself a good salesperson, but everyone should spend as least one year selling something just to get that little bit of experience. If you want to, if you want to be in business. And it’s also, you know, it’s about crafting that story and learning how to then present it to somebody so you can have a great. Story frame I framework laid out. But if you don’t present it well, it’s that’s not going to matter either. And it’s also about using a lot of those skills that are hard. The skills of empathy, eye contact. This is something that I see. When I started teaching in 2013, I had mostly millennials sitting in my classroom, and now I’ve got Gen Z and I see where making eye contact is not as easy for that younger generation. And a lot of that has to do with the pandemic and it has to do a whole other conversation we can have. It certainly has to do with technology, because they grew up in a different time from millennials when millennials had technology. But it was much more the dumb phones, as we like to call. My favorite, was always my flip phone. That was definitely my favorite of all my phones I’ve ever had. But it’s also paying attention. You know what? As you’re presenting, what are people’s It’s a conversation. And I think a lot of people don’t they forget that that that’s what it’s about. You’re there to connect with someone and to use your pitch as a way to connect and to build your business relationships.

Bill Sherman Well, and there’s a piece of it that there’s also a live performance aspect of pitching if it’s in person. And there’s a difference between an in-person physical presentation and pitch, a virtual pitch and then one which is canned or recorded or written. And I think of it as the difference between live theater film and, you know, the record announcement.

Joanne Tombrakos Right. Announcer.

Bill Sherman And even in theater, there’s a huge difference between a Broadway production and something that’s done in a black box, you know, in a small community setting where it is intimate and there is nowhere to hide on stage. And so you have to really be aware of the space and the modality that you’re meeting someone with that idea.

Bill Sherman If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a five-star review at ratethispodcast.com/ltl and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Bill Sherman And to that, I want to bridge back to the book because you made some conscious choices about the structure of the book. This could have been a much more academically focused maybe. She made a choice not to unpack that for me and describe for our listeners the experience of the book.

Joanne Tombrakos Well, I wanted it to be practical. I am a practitioner and I often I actually talk about this in the book. The one sentence rule that if you can’t get your idea in one sentence, then forget about it. And I wanted to write the book in the practice that I wanted people to take from it. I’m not one to get so mired in that gobbledygook, for lack of a better word, right now. I didn’t want it to be a lot of gobbledygook. I wanted it to be something that was practical and also to sound like me. Because one of the things that I have noticed, too, especially with young people, is that they are terrified of standing in front of a room and presenting anything. And it goes back to themselves. This is it doesn’t come easily to them. I myself are to believe, was a painfully shy young woman. No one really believes me except for my best friend who I’m still friends with, who I. We became friends in the fifth grade. She’s just tell them to call me. I will tell them. So I understand, you know, how that that reticence that can be there. So I wanted it also to be very approachable so that it’s like, yes, anyone can do this and make it easy and practical and one that in fact, one of my colleagues who I really respect, it was one of the early people who had read it there. His first words were, I love this. It sounds just like me because it’s just right to the point you’re not getting or you’re not. And I didn’t want it to be that. I could easily have filled that with another, you know, 75 pages of I don’t know what. But that wasn’t the purpose. I wanted it to be practical. And as it turns out, some of the feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s inspirational, So I’m not quite sure where that comes from. It wasn’t my intention. But, you know, sometimes things happen and it’s not necessarily your intention, and that’s what happens.

Bill Sherman So I think sometimes it’s easy to layer an idea with complexity to try and give it an air of credibility. Yeah. And say this is important. This is well thought. Look at all of the work I’ve put into this. But to distill an idea down, like you said, with the one sentence rule and to make it accessible, sticky and memorable so that if I’m walking into a meeting or if I’m giving a pitch, I can recall that one piece of advice and that triggers a set of behaviors. Yes, that’s powerful, but it takes a lot of work to distill something down and make it simple.

Joanne Tombrakos Yes, but that’s my thing. That’s part of my own brand. Exactly. I’m all about making things simple. I hate complication. It actually got me into trouble often in my corporate career because I would make my job look much simpler than it really was because it was the only way I could function. More than one time when I left a job afterwards, somebody would say, I had no idea you were doing all that. The person who took over said, Well, you know, I don’t like complication. I try and keep things organized and simple. So that’s why, you know, I wanted it to fit in with that part of who I am.

Bill Sherman So what advice would you give someone who is crafting a pitch specifically around their ideas, their thought leadership? They have a message they want to get out into the world. What could they do that would help them be more effective at pitching?

Joanne Tombrakos Well, I think I’m going to go back to this one sentence robot. I actually have it in there that when. If you cannot figure out a way to state the core of what your idea is in one sentence, you don’t have an idea. You don’t have an idea.

Bill Sherman I 100% agree.

Joanne Tombrakos But people don’t get that because, again, they get caught up in all I’ve got a sound like this. I’m going to and sometimes now God help you. Have you use Jenny? Jenny, I. And you’re not asking the right questions. You get all of this flowery, ridiculous language. And I can find it in a minute when I know someone is used too much. Jenny, I. On that. But if you can’t, then you’re not going to be able to do anything else around your pitch because you won’t be able to sell it. And no one else is going to understand it. So, yes, you’re going to add the layers of complexity to it. You know, this is my idea. I haven’t told you how it works yet, but this is my idea in the sentence, and this is how it’s going to help you. Or this is how it’s solving a problem that maybe you gave me. And depending on what the circumstances are and you’re going to figure out how you get you what this thing is going to cost and all the other little minutia that goes along with it. But if you don’t if you can’t say it in a sentence, you’re going to you’re going to lose sight of what you’re what you want, what you want out of this, what that idea is. So I think that’s and that’s hard. It’s not easy. It really is not easy.

Bill Sherman And one of the things that I’ve seen in the practice of thought leadership is a lot of people almost have a magpie approach to thought leadership. They collect lots of ideas, and they think they need more good ideas. Whereas one clearly articulated, deeply relevant idea, often repeated over and over, until people get sort of tune in and get it is far more powerful. I’ve seen entire careers built around one idea.

Joanne Tombrakos Well and that’s and you’re and you’re right about the repetition because the assumption that anyone is going to get anything the first time is ridiculous. I mean, I consider myself fairly educated and I read a lot and I can still and I go to seminars. They do whatever. I can still sit someplace and someone can say something to me, an idea that I’ve heard. I don’t even know how many times. And all of a sudden it clicks. Something was said. It was said slightly differently. It’s like, now I get it. And it’s not that it was introduced to me the first time, but it wasn’t really making sense until that moment. So, you know, we used it in the old days in advertising. We used to say that someone had to hear a message three times in order for it to be effective. I don’t even know what the number is today because there’s so much garbage coming at us constantly. So it’s that assumption that you’re going to get something the first time is nuts. Well, I give it that for lack of a more eloquent word. It’s just it’s just it’s not nuts.

Bill Sherman And we put up our filters and our guard, and so we’re more resistant to ideas. Yes. Because we don’t want that intellectual clutter, even if we’re curious. And so having that idea that you can present again and again with the same freshness. Even though you may have delivered at 100, 200 a thousand times. But for that person like you were describing yourself and the audience, it’s the time where it could potentially click. And if I’m going through the motions and I’m going, okay, it’s Tuesday and I’m repeating it again and I’m not present, I’m not fully engaged. And here. You missed that opportunity to get the idea to connect.

Joanne Tombrakos Yes. And that’s that. You bring up a really good point because I talk about that in the book. And it’s that concept that when you are presenting your ideas, you yourself have to be fully present. You can’t be you can’t be thinking about anything else because you don’t know what’s going on in that person’s life. You don’t know whether you know the dog is sick or you have no idea what’s going on in their background. And if so, if you’re not fully present, you’re never going to be able to figure out a way to get them fully present because you aren’t even going to notice it.

Bill Sherman And that’s the paradox there is you have to be so fully present that you can be able to reach into your audience’s world and be present there rather than present in your room.

Joanne Tombrakos All my students laugh because I call them my superpowers. But, you know, it’s not sort of superpowers. It’s, you know, years of experience. But I can tell when someone’s paying attention and when someone’s not. And if I know that I’m not getting someone’s attention, then in my head, you know, that’s what I referred to. It’s almost having multiple computer programs going on in your head at the same time. And here I know where I want to go, but I’m watching here and how am I going to get that person who’s that person’s important to this whole conversation? How am I going to pull them back in? What can I do? Can I ask a question? You know, it’s being empathetic to your audience as well. And again, using a lot of those softer skills that are much more challenging to develop in today’s world because we’re so we think our phone is a relationship and it’s not.

Bill Sherman Or we substitute a low context text or email for something that deserves a richer conversation and needs a richer conversation. And so we use the wrong modality and we’re misaligned. And we come across as decent. Yeah.

Joanne Tombrakos I think there’s a I think there is a lot of that. I think you can really get misunderstood in a text message, even in an email if you’re not if you’re not careful. Emails are, I think, have a little bit more space to get your message across. But text messaging can really be detrimental to getting your ideas across.

Bill Sherman So I want to ask you a question as we begin to wrap up here. Joanne, you said you started in the world of advertising and selling radio plays, right? You’re now teaching at NYU. You teach the art of the pitch. You teach it practically written on it. You’ve had a journey into thought leadership. My question for you is what advice would you give your younger self? Back in the days of when you started out in radio and pitching?

Joanne Tombrakos Well, what advice would I give? It’s pretty funny because the first year I took that job, it was not I never thought I was going to stay in it. It was just to get sales experience. Yeah, because no one would hire me because I had no sales experience. You know, I think it’s the answer I generally give is that, you know, everything’s going to be okay. And to know that whatever you’re doing and whatever point in time is going to build on something else, you know, the same skills that I use as a salesperson make me a better teacher and they make me a more engaging teacher because I had to engage my clients and get them to. And of course, I was also in media, which didn’t hurt the fact that I was in, you know, radio and then in television. And I think people kind of expected you to be on the fringes of show business, so to speak. So I think all and I think that said, is that everything, even when you’re not aware at that time, everything that you do is building on something that you’re going to be using again later. You know, I again, I don’t I don’t teach radio and television, but I do also teach digital marketing at NYU. And I teach socially in the brand. Okay. How did that happen? That’s a I’m not exactly sure, but it did happen. So everything builds on everything and that’s okay. And that’s a good thing. And to know that everything’s going to work out. So I guess that’s and that’s always my other thing. I think we worry too much when we’re younger and about what’s going to happen.

Bill Sherman And to pull that back together. I think the red thread is often hard to find when you’re looking forward, but when you’re looking back, you can see and say, here’s where I’m pulling the skills that I built, or here’s knowledge that’s coming into this. And so really, from a perspective of thought leadership, advancing ideas realize that everything that you’re doing every day is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to develop.

Joanne Tombrakos I love that. I love that. Now, I had this conversation recently with one of my students whose undergraduate degree was in psychology. And I’m like, Wow. Like, that’s like, so such a great basis for being in marketing because people forget that it’s really about people now. And we forget that that’s really at the end of the day, we’re still trying, you know, humans trying to connect with other humans and. I think that does sometimes get lost in translation, not too.

Bill Sherman Well, and to even build on the differences in degrees. My undergraduate degrees were in English literature and theater. And between live performance and crafting live performance as well as communicating through the written word. I use those skills every day as well as understanding the structure of storytelling. What makes a storytelling beat? All of those skills are there. But I’m not wearing a tweed sport coat for teaching at a four-year university around, you know, James Joyce or, you know, Yeats. And that’s okay.

Joanne Tombrakos And that’s okay. But you bring that into your thought leadership stuff. So that’s all. It’s all. And yet it’s like you’re a better podcaster because you have the skills.

Bill Sherman Joanne, I want to thank you for joining us today for conversation about pitching about your work as well as your book. It’s been a delightful conversation.

Joanne Tombrakos It’s been great. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Bill Sherman Okay. You’ve made it to the end of the episode, and that means you’re probably someone deeply interested in thought leadership. Want to learn even more? Here are three recommendations. First, check out the back catalog of our podcast episodes. There are a lot of great conversations with people at the top of their game and thought leadership as well as just starting out. Second, subscribe to our newsletter that talks about the business of thought leadership. And finally, feel free to reach out to me. My day job is helping people with big insights take them to scale through the practice of thought leadership. Maybe you’re looking for strategy, or maybe you want to polish up your ideas or even create new products and offerings. I’d love to chat with you. Thanks for listening.